Release: PlateSpin PowerRecon 3.0

PowerSpin released third version of its good capacity planning solution PowerRecon.

In this new version following features are available:

  • Power and cooling data analysis
  • Workload and resource utilization forecasting
  • Automated reporting
  • Support for distributed deployments
  • Support for Sun Solaris (just for inventory, data collection and reporting. Not for consolidation planning)

Beside new PowerRecon power and cooling data analysis module, PlateSpin also launched a very interesting online green calculator, assessing cost savings in power and cooling depending on different consolidation scenarios.

Download a trial of PowerRecon 3.0 here.

The virtualization.info Virtualization Industry Roadmap has been updated accordingly.

Release: XenSource XenEnterprise 3.2

XenSource finally releases its awaited update for XenEnterprise plaform, introducing some good capabilities for Windows guest operating systems:

  • Support for virtual SMP (Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP guests OSes)
  • Support for up to 8GB virtual RAM (Windows guest OSes)
  • Support for iSCSI SAN
  • Support for VLAN trunking
  • Support for resources control (CPU, disk and network)
  • Support for Windows 2000, Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 SP1 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 guest OSes

XenEnterprise 3.2 is available now starting from $488 for an annual subscription license per dual socket server, and $750 perpetual license per dual socket server.

Download the XenEnterprise 3.2 trial here.

You may also want to check benchmarks report about VMware ESX Server 3.0.1 vs XenEnterprise 3.2 beta comparison.

The virtualization.info Virtualization Industry Roadmap has been updated accordingly.

Release: InovaWave DXtreme 2.0

After securing $2 million in Series A funding in January, the US startup InovaWave is ready to launch second version of its unique optimization tool for virtualization platforms: DXtreme.

In this release we can find the new Performance Center, for monitoring optimization status, and Stats Service, for stats analysis.

Download the DXtreme 2.0 trial here.

The virtualization.info Virtualization Industry Roadmap has been updated accordingly.

Release: Veeam Reporter 1.6

The russian startup Veeam continues to release updates for its new Reporter tool at very fast pace.

After just a couple of weeks it already reached version 1.6, introducing:

  • Support for HTTP proxy
  • Details for VNICs (including Service Console and VMKernel ones)

Check for a sample report here (Internet Explorer only) or download the Veeam Reporter 1.6 trial here.

The virtualization.info Virtualization Industry Roadmap has been updated accordingly.

Citrix announces Desktop Server

Quoting from Citrix official announcement:

Citrix Systems, Inc., the global leader in application delivery infrastructure, today announced Citrix Desktop Server 1.0 (previously code-named Project Trinity).

By supporting all popular methods for installing desktop operating systems in a datacenter – including virtual machine environments, blade PCs and Windows Terminal Services – Desktop Server gives IT administrators maximum flexibility to deliver the right desktop to the right user at the lowest possible cost.

Desktop Server 1.0 is scheduled for availability in the second quarter of 2007…

Live from VMware TSX 2007 – part 2

As told in 1st day report, I used today to attend a couple of special sessions which provided an idea of VMware R&D directions:

  • Virtualization-optimized Architectures (formerly Architectural Directions for Virtual Infrastructure)
    This probably is the most insightful session to attend, detailing VMware current and future efforts on CPU, memory and OS optimization.
    In particular Yu-Shen Ng, ESX Server’s Group Product Manager focused on memory partitioning which AMD and Intel will provide with future CPUs: AMD Nested Page Tables (NTP) and Intel Enhanced Page Tables (EPT) will allow a broader range of workloads to be virtualized (and not only ones which perform memory intensive tasks), improving efficiency and reducing demand inside virtual machines, while hardware will mitigate new overhead introduced.
    He also stressed on VMware VMI benefits over para-virtualization, which is currently facing tough challenges in enterprises because or required guest OSes modifications.
    The most interesting part anyway has been made by Yu-Shen comments at the end of the session, directly attacking both XenSource and Microsoft: the first one with an unclear future because of current Linux community factualization around new KVM virtualization module, the second one with an unclear and untrustable involvement in open source because of company openness to standards.
  • VMware Consolidated Backup: Today and Tomorrow
    In this session Andy Tucker, Principal Engineer, performs a comprensive overview of VMware VCB, clarifying also current technologies limitations (catalog, scheduling, restore capabilities are missing), and providing a fair insight of what’s coming: possible integration with VMware Converter to provide a full data recovery solution (which would put even more overlapping and competition between VMware and its partners PlateSpin and vizioncore), a programmatic API, new capabilities to correctly recognize LUNs (through unique signatures in VMFS metadata), and capability to run VCB proxy in a virtual machine.

But these are not the only news from VMware:

  • As a precious virtualization.info reported in 1st day report’s comments, codename Fusion, the desktop solution VMware will launch for Apple market, to counter Parallels success: it will hit beta 3 before the end of this week, and a beta 4 will follow as well. Final release will be available in summer (possibly for Apple WWDC conference) featuring few secret features.
  • Capacity Planner will reach 2.6 version in Q3 2007, featuring reports on power consumption and suggestions on best virtual machines configuration.

Today closes with a fun trivia: what ESX acronym really means? Some attendees tried to discover the secret behind the name talking with some VMware representatives but didn’t get a final answer…What’s your take?

Update: Scott has been the first answering and unveiled the mistery behind it.

ESX stands for Elastic Sky X (while the old GSX, now just Server, was the acronym for Ground Storm X)!

Second update: Karl Rumelhart, Senior Product Manager at VMware, reported on VMTN blog about the most interesting (and most hilarious) session of the entire event: The Next Big Thing.

During it a lot has been discovered about european VMware customers, and even some of research direction VMware is considering (one for all: extending to physical layer management capabilities).

But most of all emerged how customers are looking for less expensive solutions with a-la-carte options, better suited for SMBs needs.

Live from VMware TSX 2007 – part 1

This morning VMware started its Technical Solutions Exchange (TSX) 5th edition in Nice, France.

Featuring over 1,000 attendees as previously announced, TSX became the biggest virtualization event in Europe, which is an impressive result considering attendees saw the agenda just two weeks ago.

In two hours four keynotes took place this morning:

Stephen Herrod, Vice President of Technology Development, spent a large part of his keynote covering VMware Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM) architecture, and explaining how it could further improve in future, thanks to upcoming innovations on I/O virtualization, starting from memory thanks to AMD Nested Page Tables (NPT) and Intel Extended Page Tables (EPT).

Such innovations will eventually mitigate or completely eliminate virtualization overhead but, as Bogomil Balkansky, Director of Product Marketing, told few days ago, this will not happen before 2-3 years.

Srinivas Krishnamurti, Director of Product Management and Market Development, talked about virtual appliances benefits for customers, and how this market is expected to become standardized.

He also briefly mentioned the Just Enough OS (JeOS), the operating system based on Debian developed by VMware and currently adopted for its own appliances, like the Management Server provided with new ACE 2.0 Enterprise Edition.

JeOS is the most interesting part of the virtual appliances discussion because it provides a small system footprint and an automatic update mechanism, simplifying work for ISVs wanting to provide a secure and reliable solution.

Robert Dell’Immagine, VMTN Director, talked about successes achieved by VMTN Forums since 2004, which now reaches over 300,000 members, and about upcoming new features: a tagging system, a wiki public platform and most of all the availability for all members to have a personal blog on the VMware content management system.

Robert also briefly introduced the new VI Operations site, actually in private beta, which virtualization.info discovered last week and incorrectly reported as a new product: VI Ops is a new site providing suggestions and best practices about VMware Infrastructure implementations.

And finally David Day, VMware EMEA Senior Trainer, provided a complete overview of VMware Training worldwide, revealing North America has more classroom courses but EMEA features more VMware Certified Professionals (VCP).

David also provided a brief hint about upcoming chances in current exam structure and new online courses about VMware Converter and ACE 2.0 to be launched later in 2007.

Despite TSX is not a press event where new products are announced, there are three sessions which may provide attendees an insight about what’s coming next:

  • Architectural Directions for Virtual Infrastructure
  • VMware Consolidated Backup: Today and Tomorrow
  • What is the next big thing (based on attendees suggestions during the event)

More on these sessions in the next part. Stay tuned!

The Microsoft virtualization chance

The Microsoft investment in virtualization industry started in unsuspected times, with the acquisition of the only VMware competitor in 2003: Connectix.

At that time rumours spread the gossip story Microsoft tried to acquire VMware first, but the company management didn’t want to simply become a department like others at Redmond headquarters.

Other anonymous voices whispered instead that Microsoft was evaluating both VMware and Connectix technologies when finally decided for the latter, being faster and easier to integrate with Windows for time to come.

Obviously none of these versions can be confirmed, and possibly both are completely counterfeit.

In any case since that time Microsoft has been almost dormant, providing one minor update per year to Virtual PC (already existing at Connectix time) and Virtual Server (in development at acquisition time), and basically letting VMware becoming a de-facto monopolist in the virtualization industry.

Microsoft also failed to fill voids in the virtualization ecosystem at that time, not producing effective tools for physical to virtual migration and enterprise management, and not facilitating virtualization reconsidering support strategy and licensing models.

In other words Redmond giant has never been perceived nor as a leader neither as an innovator.

Then, in October 2005, Microsoft decides to completely change its approach and announces part of a complex, long-term strategy to conquer a market which became the most dynamic and promising of last years.

And now, even if some aspects of this strategy are still unveiled, everybody look at the company asking if it has a real chance to beat VMware on its own game.

First step: Viridian and Virtual Machine Manager

The very first milestone in Microsoft renewed virtualization strategy is codenamed Viridian: a brand new hypervisor deeply connected with Windows kernel, expected to be available for free and delivered as a service pack, with a tighter integrated in the operating system within few years.

Viridian, officially called Windows Server Virtualization (WSV) at the moment, is designed to compete with VMware datacenter produce, ESX Server, bringing in another level of performances and capabilities.

The company is investing a lot in both these aspects to offer a notable alternative to ESX.

To improve virtual machines efficiency Microsoft is working with Intel and AMD to make out the most from their next generation CPUs, and at the same time arranged a partnership with XenSource, makers of open source hypervisor Xen, to make sure Linux guest OSes will achieve highest performances possible.

On the capabilities side, Microsoft is taking care to grant compatibility with current Virtual Server virtual machines images (.vhd), and it’s directly modifying Windows, allowing its operating system to sustain a hardware modification while running (like adding memory modules, processors or network interface cards for example) in a virtual machine.

Since this last feature depends on Windows itself at the moment is not clear if even VMware will be able to use it, but remains a remarkable selling point for Viridian.

Viridian is currently planned to provide virtualization capabilities to Windows Server editions only, letting out Vista and codename Vienna (its successor), where Microsoft probably plan to deliver another kind of virtualization (see below).

But this aspect of the strategy may change soon and we’ll probably have more details at upcoming WinHEC 2007, while the final product is expected 180 days after Longhorn release (which probably means on early 2008).

Viridian alone won’t be able to seriously compete with powerful VMware Infrastructure solution, so Microsoft also included in its plan an enterprise management tool, System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM), which has two delicate talks to achieve: simplify migration to Viridian for current virtualization customers and provide an effective solution for large scale virtual datacenters.

First task will absolved directly managing side by side Viridian and Virtual Server hosts, permitting virtual to virtual (V2V) migrations from them and from other virtualization platforms to Viridian.
Second task will be absolved introducing semi-automatic provisioning tools as well as per-groups resources reservation capabilities.

On Virtual Machine Manager, which is already in beta testing since August 2006 and is expected to be officially released before Viridian, depends a large part of Microsoft virtualization strategy for enterprise segment.

It’s almost sure the first product release will not able to compete with VMware VirtualCenter and recently released Lab Manager, but may be enough to satisfy most needs.

Anyway to assure so many efforts are really successful Microsoft had to count on its endless swarm of partners, which are involving through a concept originally developed by its competitor VMware: the virtual appliance.

In November 2006 Microsoft launches the VHD Test Drive Program, which allows potential customers to download pre-build virtual machines loading pre-installed Windows, SQL Server, Exchange Server and other popular company products.

This move, which at first sight just seems a poor attempt to clone the recently announced VMware Virtual Appliance Marketplace (VAM), aims at different purpose: when the program will be extended to tents of ISVs as announced, customers interested in their pre-configured products, even if only for evaluation purposes, will be induced to use Microsoft virtualization platform massively. At that point will be easier to enter VMware customers’ domains and have the chance of a comparison between technologies.

Even if at today it’s already possible convert a Virtual Server virtual machine to use it on VMware products, it’s highly unlikely this will happen in evaluation scenarios.
Microsoft will count on Viridian ubiquity and virtual appliances potentials to let customers know there is new player on market.

Second step: SoftGrid

Microsoft will not stop providing a brand new server virtualization platform.

The new strategy is looking far ahead, when the way we think computing may change once again thanks to application virtualization technologies.

Still on early stages today, within few years there is a chance application virtualization will coexist with server virtualization, serving self-contained applications on demand, without the need of installation, and radically transforming the client side of IT infrastructures succeeding where thin computing failed so far.

Betting on this scenario (and preparing to front an inevitable competition with its long time partner Citrix) in July 2006 Microsoft acquired Softricity, one of the most prominent vendor in the space thanks to its streaming capability.

Microsoft is currently offering the original product, called SoftGrid, almost unmodified and without any serious marketing effort, but the company is expected to integrate it in System Center Configuration Manager (formerly System Management Server or SMS) first and directly in Windows sometimes later.

With SoftGrid technology Microsoft has a chance to complement the Viridian virtualization offering, reaching those customers VMware cannot reach at the moment.

Third step: OS partitioning

As I said not all parts of the Microsoft strategy are unveiled. The vaguest part of it involves adoption of another virtualization approach, called OS partitioning (or OS virtualization).

In today’s market this approach is considered a less flexible alternative to server virtualization (or hardware virtualization) due to inability to host different operating systems on the same hardware, even if it can better fit some scenarios where multiple identical environments must be managed in similar way, like web hosting.

Microsoft announced it will enter this space too, but without providing any roadmap and letting understand this will be the farthest milestone to reach.

At first sight it’s not clear why Microsoft, investing so much in hardware virtualization, may be interested in OS virtualization too, but carefully looking at possibilities I recognize a future when the company will be able to offer abstraction at three levels, hardware, operating system and application, letting customers decide how much granularity they need in tomorrow’s highly powerful datacenters.

A road leading to unmatched flexibility and endless configurations, where grid computing seems nearer.

Conquering the industry through SMBs

Despite all these technologies, considering timeframes and current virtualization market position, it’s not hard looking at Microsoft with scepticism about its chances to take some real shares or even control this industry in a reasonable time: when the Windows hypervisor will be ready who knows how further VMware will be in development and popularity?

Why customers should decide to go with Microsoft when it’s already known the first release of Viridian will not be able to sustain a comparison with VMware technology?

In my opinion Microsoft chance to win lies in the SMB segment, which fatally is where VMware is weaker at the moment.

Possibly huge funds and impressive marketing machine are not enough for Microsoft to move biggest customers away from ESX Server in short times: VMware enterprise features cannot be matched at the moment and I can safely say products are shaped around Fortune 500 needs.

But there is a huge base of potential customers which are working with VMware products because they are free, which don’t need or can’t budget a SAN, which can’t train an administrator to become a networking/system/storage expert or can’t budget hiring one.

And there is an even greater amount of potential customers which are not adopting virtualization yet, because they don’t know it, because it’s not reliable enough, or just because they are waiting to see what Microsoft will do.

These customers represent worldwide small and medium business.

This market segment represents a unique opportunity for Microsoft to take over VMware.

Placing Viridian in every single new Windows Server copy the Redmond giant is telling these customers they have a product as free as competing one, but with an advantage: it’s already there. Nothing to search, download, install or learn as new technology.

The hypervisor will be part of the OS as a checked option in the installation process, as an integrated component to administer with Management Console like IIS or Active Directory, as a standard host to backup with usual product, as just a new chapter in the administration guide or the official classroom courseware.

An advantage that makes the difference in a world where there is no budget for training, no time for testing compatibility, no culture for lab facilities.
Here integration Microsoft can provide between its products can drive adoption more than any technical enhancement.

Free, integrated and already there.

To enforce these concepts Microsoft may use a product in particular. A product which had mixed fortune so far: Windows Small Business Server (SBS).

The most recurrent critique to SBS in history is related to its security: it’s impossible to provide an acceptable level of trust on a host where directory services, DNS services, mail services, database services, internet and intranet web sites are installed together (inclusion of ISA Server and WSUS doesn’t help much since they cannot address isolation of publicly accessed servers).

Now imagine Microsoft to release next version of SBS based on Viridian, where every mentioned product is securely contained in a virtual machine, virtual networking is pre-configured to run publicly accessed servers in a screened subnet, and every Windows instance points to the ISA Server virtual machine as its enterprise firewall.

Isn’t this a server farm in a box?

Obviously such configuration could be arranged even today, with any VMware product or even with Microsoft Virtual Server itself.

But requires hours, skills for the virtualization infrastructures, and has no licensing bundle benefits.

Who wouldn’t a pre-configured server farm in a box at a bundle price?

In such scenario would be easy for Microsoft to conquer the SMB market and hard for VMware to sustain the slogan “our virtualization platform is better”.

This article originally appeared on SearchServerVirtualization.

Xen 3.0.2 vs OpenVZ for Linux kernel 2.6.16 performance comparison

Keeping high benchmarks dispute started by VMware in its comparison between ESX Server and Xen, which XenSource tried to close providing a much fairer comparison between ESX server and XenEnterprise, OpenVZ published on its blog a performance analysis of OpenVZ patches for Linux kernel 2.6.16 against Xen 3.0.2, both on Fedora Core 5.

The original work, a 130-pages diploma thesis by Björn Gross-Hohnacker, is in German language, but OpenVZ team has been so kind to translate in English 17 pages of it, from which we can read following conclusion:

The comparison of both processes led to the result that OpenVZ can deliver an extremely efficient virtualization approach for a deployment within a Linux operating system layer. This approach offers a level of performance similar to a standalone physical system without a perceptible loss through the implementation itself. On the other hand, Xen offers the functionality of a very comprehensive resource allocation offering the opportunity to exclusively make a large part of the virtual components available to guests, thus ensuring high scalability. In summary, one can state that the analysis and evaluation of the different implementations showed that no virtualization process is optimal for each kind of use case. It is important to first conduct an extensive survey for each application in order to select a solution which is most suitable for the respective requirements.

On these statements OpenVZ team provided an additional reading:

IPC and disk I/O performance is better (or much better) for OpenVZ than Xen, CPU-intensive tasks are about the same for both, networking is a bit better in OpenVZ. Conclusion: for homogeneous (i. e. Linux-only) environments, OpenVZ is way better — as it was designed to be.

Read the original work in German language or the OpenVZ English translated part.